The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
The Cartoon & Poem Supplement
"Careful—"
Another one just for paying guests. Ahoy.
Poems:
“Vigil” by Camille Rankine: A meditation on the theme of staying awake at night, generally. Is it romance, is it death, is it depression? Any or all of the above. Wonderful assonance, and the rhythm throughout is just right. Things just don’t develop in an especially satisfying way; the ending peters out with a slant rhyme. Night night.
“Everything Always” by Alex Dimitrov: These sorts of early-20s heart-wrenching fully felt feelings are perfectly valid coming from a 39-year-old… they’re just a bit cornier. Are you really still in your why-am-I-not-a-tree era? Your “Goodbye to the past! / I buy leather pants” lifestyle? Sometimes editing away from the feeling that enveloped you when you wrote a poem can make it more complex; this feels written in the throes of mild mania, and edited toward that mania. It’s sincere, I’m just put off by it – its love encroaches too much, wants too much in return. This will find its readers, though.
Cartoons:
Here's where to find the cartoons, with credits, in order.
Cover: They should’ve just re-ran the cover from 2016, which was an instant classic. Not only would that have been an iconic move, it would mirror their 2020 Biden cover, which re-ran their 2012 Obama cover. Barring that I guess shadow-Trump is fine; Blitt can certainly draw him. It just doesn’t say much, and it continues the recent trend toward portrait covers, which I oppose.
Pg. 9: Probably could wait a bit longer from the release of the Dating Game Killer movie to do this bit.
Pg. 15: Apology cards generally don’t illustrate the specific thing you’re apologizing for, even when they’re targeted toward a specific kind of apology.
Pg. 16: Fun. Not sure why there’s a fire-breathing Pac Man next to the grapes. An unbelievably weak batch, but this is the Best of the Week.
Pg. 17: Not even a vaguely amusing gripe.
Pg. 24: I feel like curds and whey are less a dessert and more a breakfasty food, why an éclair? Shouldn’t it be, say, Cream of Wheat? (There’s something funny about the consonance there, too.)
Pg. 30: Two consecutive riffs on kiddie myths! This one is, you know, fine.
Pg. 33: This is like a line the gangster penguins would say in the Madagascar movies. From offscreen.
Pg. 35: This is literally just last month’s Twitter meme. And it’s kinda misanthropic.
Pg. 38: Totally flat. What if there was a drive-through mom? Well… I guess she would say mom stuff. Where’s the inspiration?
Pg. 40: An eleven on the zany meter.
Pg. 43: The same way every Pixar movie is just “what if this concept was a job”, a lot of the magazine’s cartoons are just “what if this concept was being thirty-two in New York City?”
Pg. 44: Uber†
Pg. 47: I wonder when the superficial culture takes pendulum will start swinging back toward “let people enjoy things”.
Pg. 51: This week in wouldn’t be funny if someone said it to me in real life.
Pg. 54: I guess the cartoon editor was depressed about the election and just said “yes” to the first joke in every packet.
Pg. 58: Three out of five Dreamworks eyebrows.
Pg. 63: Genuinely didn’t know this was a problem people had. But sponges are pretty gross. Scrub-brush life is superior.
38 Years Ago Today
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